What do you do after planting a raspberry bush in the backyard, aside from popping the juiciest ones into your mouth? If you’re Christine Manning, you launch a preserves company – and then some.

After having worked in marketing for close to 20 years, Toronto-based Manning was ready for a change, one that melded past, present and future.

“I always had a passion for it – I blame it on my mother,” she laughs when asked about what inspired her entrepreneurial path. “She’s Italian, so I grew up in a preserving household.”

In fact, the first time Manning tried store-bought jam while attending university in Toronto, the disconnect between label and product was alarming “Raspberry jam didn’t taste like raspberries!” she recalls. “For me, real ingredients were very important because that’s always been a part of my life growing up.”

Manning was preserving way before it was considered cool, she says, and was often mocked by friends for doing “something your grandmother did.” But the entrepreneur would soon get the last laugh – and a slew of accolades, including winning Gold at the World’s Original Marmalade Awards and being honoured by the BMO Celebrating Women program in the category of Expansion & Growth in Small Business.

It all began when Manning planted her first garden in her new home in the Toronto neighbourhood of Guildwood a few years ago. Not wanting to let any of the lovely bumper crop go to waste, she tapped into ancestral tradition and began preserving. Soon, Manning was selling her products at a local farmer’s market, where she caught the eye, and mouth, of a manager of a butcher shop who asked to carry her preserves in his store.

Launched in 2012, Manning Canning today sells 11 different preserve products (Spicy Pickled Carrots has been a best-seller since Day 1) in 120 retail stores across Canada and online. The company has recently expanded its product line to include three flavours of a health beverage called Shrub, a new take on a 17th-century elixir known as “drinking vinegar,” for which cold-pressed fruit juice is infused with organic apple cider vinegar. “We’re seeing a tremendous growth of Shrub,” says Manning, adding that healthy beverages comprise the fastest-growing consumer category in the U.S.

In 2014, frustrated with the difficulty in finding reliable rental kitchens from which to produce her products, Manning took another step by launching Manning Canning Kitchens, a commercially certified rental kitchen located in the Leaside neighbourhood of Toronto. The hope was to offer similarly challenged small food producers the opportunity to grow. Aside from the kitchens, the facility also provides dried-goods storage space and freezer and fridge rentals.

Supporting other businesses has been one of Manning’s more gratifying achievements. “I’m most proud of the fact that as we grow our business, we’re also helping other food entrepreneurs start and grow their own,” she says. “It’s always great to see other entrepreneurs experience success because of the facility we built that enabled that.”

It hasn’t always been easy. One of Manning’s important takeaways is learning “you have to work on your business, not in your business,” she says. That means being willing to to hand off certain tasks and projects – admittedly a difficult proposition for entrepreneurs, for whom “doing it all” is accepted practice. Yet it explains why Manning today is focused on the bigger picture – growing her business – while her team and husband (who left his job to become a business partner) take care of the day-to-day.

“Having a great support network really helps,” she acknowledges. And as she looks forward, her efforts largely concentrated on the growth of Shrub, Manning is convinced that her decision to let go is central to success. “If you can’t make that step, it’s almost impossible to grow.”

This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of BMO.